2 comments:

Fascinating. It's always interesting to hear what people think about interface design.

I don't see how an up arrow would indicate "click to expand the view below," though. Or how a down arrow would indicate "close the thing above." But I have been in plenty of debates about arrows and the directions they should point to know different people see this differently.

Apparently someone at Firefox thought it wasn't entirely intuitive; thus the decision to spell out what the buttons do with the words "more" and "less." I hate it when an interface needs written instructions right on it. :-)

I was going to say that the down arrows as they are used in the case you cite are among the most well understood and common interface elements. Indeed, there are six - count 'em, SIX -- other down arrows that operate in a similar fashion in that very screenshot. Three of them are in the menu bar, adjacent to Organize, Views, and Import & Backup. Two are on scrollbars. And the last one is attached to the Tags field. I don't know about the last one, but the others all operate on the same principle: "If you click this, hidden stuff below will become visible."